


Smile

by Flyting



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Drinking, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kilgrave is still a bag of dicks, dark-ish Jessica, fucked up codependent relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Let him see how it feels to have someone else decide what you wear, what you eat, what you do every minute of the goddamn day. Let’s see how he likes being controlled.</i>
</p><p>AKA, what would Jessica do if she had Kilgrave powerless and entirely at her mercy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Points to anyone who catches the Gillian Flynn reference.

Smile.  
  
She used to always hate that fucking word.

She’d heard it from her very first boss- a fat, sweaty man in a grease-stained polyester uniform. _Smile, honey_.

She’d heard it from Dorothy, from boyfriends in high school, from men on street-corners. _How about a smile? It’s not that bad._ Like she’d shit all over their corn flakes by not having a big stupid grin especially for them.

Smile. Smile. Smile. Don’t let them catch on that you’re not fucking ecstatic to be here.

Turns out she’d be glad for the practice later on. Of course it’d be one of _his_ favorite things to order her to do. _Smile. Mean it._

She would picture snapping his neck in her hands. Feeling the bone _crack._ It made _meaning it_ just a little easier.

After Kilgrave, the first random jackass who told her to smile had walked away with a broken nose and an intimate understanding of his own colon before she’d caught herself.

Things are different now. These days, Jessica finds herself smiling all the time. It makes her cheeks ache- like her face had forgotten what a real smile feels like.

She smiles at cute little kids on the street. At the guy behind the inch-thick Plexiglas at the corner store while he counts out her change. They don’t usually smile back. Somewhere along the line her smile became a feral, vicious thing.

She smiles at Malcolm when she passes him in the hall. “Any trouble while I was gone?”

“Nah. I think he threw something at the wall a while ago, but that was it.”

The sound of the key turning in the lock and the familiar _scrape-whine_ of her front door makes her grin every time.  
  
“Honey, I’m home,” she trills, layering on the sugar. Shoulders open the door because her hands are full of plastic bags, which crinkle and rustle as she squeezes through the doorway and kicks the door shut behind her.

There’s no response. As usual. The quiet is like a Mozart symphony to her ears.

She drops the groceries there in the hall- he can put them up later- all except for the brown paper bag shoved up under her arm.

There’s a faint scratching from the direction of the kitchen, and she follows it. She finds him sitting on the narrow strip of countertop next to the sink, long legs dangling, kicking his bare feet against the cupboard doors like a bored little boy. He’s scribbling in that little spiral-bound notebook he’s started carrying everywhere. Writing.

The pen scratches across the paper. Scratch scratch scratch.

“And how was your day, Kevin?” she chirps, in that same bright, phony voice, “Do anything fun?”

He’d told her once that he just loved having someone to come home to. Loved when her smiling face was the first thing he saw when he walked in the door. Just so he wouldn’t miss it, he’d ordered her to sit facing the door with her prettiest smile on, and not to move until he got back.

It’s taken some time, but Jessica thinks she might be starting to get the appeal.

The pen stops. Taps against the paper once. Twice. His eyes flick up, throwing her a reproachful stare.  
  
In her memory, he was always so fucking polished. Mister Bespoke Suits and Designer Stubble. Neat and styled, and exfoliated to within an inch of his life. Now there are dark circles under his eyes and flakes of dead skin clinging to his lips. It’s been days since he’s shaved. Probably longer since he’s showered.  
  
Depression’s a bitch.  
  
Jessica smiles until her cheeks ache. “What was that?”  
  
He cocks his head, giving her a warning look.  
  
It’s a toothless threat and they both know it. “No?” she says. “I just sat around all day in my PJ’s like a worthless piece of shit? Is that what you said?”

There is a deep, seething hatred in his glare, and she meets it with a vicious smile.

Some people had therapy to deal with their trauma. They had support groups or hundred-dollar-an-hour psychiatrists. She had this.

It’s him who looks away first.

He shoves his notebook in a pocket of his thrift-store pajama pants and hops down off the counter.

“Not so fast-“ she says, catching him by the back of his t-shirt as he makes to shuffle past her into the hallway. “Did you finish the laundry?”

He rolls his head back with a put-out sigh and fishes the notebook and pen back out of his pocket. He flips to an empty page- she catches sight of her own name in angry caps in the middle of a long scrawled paragraph as the pages flick past- and writes two letters.  
  
_NO_  
  
“Why not?”  
  
More scratching. He mouths the words along as he writes.

 _Because it’s ridiculous._ He underlines _ridiculous_ before showing her the paper.  
  
“Yeah, it is. Welcome to normal life. Laundry is stupid. Dishes are stupid. Working for a living is stupid-”

_Does treating me like your servant make you feel better about what you’ve done to me?_

Jessica tilts her head thoughtfully. “A little, yeah.”

He huffs and snatches the notebook out of her hands. Scrawls forcefully.

_I never treated you this way._

She feels her eyebrows creep up to her hairline.

“That’s true,” she says slowly. “So… do you want me to get some of the guys from downstairs to come rape you instead of doing laundry? Would that be better?”

Jessica lives for moments like these. When he gets so pissed off he opens his mouth to argue- to tell her to apologize, to jump out the window, whatever- and realizes that he _can’t_.

She practically has wet dreams about that lost, empty look in his eyes.

He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing urgently, suddenly not able to look her in the face. One hand comes up to wrap loosely around his throat, rubbing, hiding the pale line of scar tissue there from her sight.

Jessica was a lot of things, most of them bad, but nobody had ever accused her of being slow on the uptake. She could hit him until her arm cramped up, it wouldn’t do anything except maybe make her feel better. Maybe it was all those _cerebrospinal fluid extractions_ when he was a kid. The skinny bastard was a lot tougher than he looked.  
  
No amount of pain was ever going to make him stop. So they could either kill him… or get creative.

The idea had actually been Simpson’s. “They used to do it to dogs,” he’d said. “To stop them from barking.” Trish knew a surgeon with a pill problem, who was occasionally known to take cash and didn’t ask too many questions. Teamwork makes the dream work, as one of her old bosses used to say.

It was hard to give commands when you couldn’t talk.

Normally, she likes to see it. That scar. She likes the constant reminder of exactly how powerless he is. She wasn’t ashamed to say she’d even gotten a nasty little kick out of saying no when he asked her to buy him shirts with high collars. Something that would cover up that ugly, telltale scar.

Is it cruel? Sadistic? Mean? Yes.  
  
Illegal as hell? That too.  
  
Does she give a single solitary shit? Nope. Let him see how it feels to have someone else decide what you wear, what you eat, what you do every minute of the goddamn day. Let’s see how he likes being _controlled_.

 _Do it yourself,_ he writes, finally. He leaves her the notebook as he sulks into the other room. She hears the couch creak and the distant chatter as the television turns on.

“Oh I’m sorry,” she calls after him. “Was I keeping you from all that important work you do?”

She rolls her eyes. God, he was still such a fucking diva. That sure as shit hadn’t changed.

After a minute, Jessica follows him into the other room.

That was what they did. They followed each other in circles, around and around, until she had no idea which one of them was running anymore. It was like living on a goddamn merry-go-round. Fucked up codependent bullshit.  
  
It wasn’t like she was keeping him here. That was the most fucked up part about it.  
  
He had only tried to run once, just after the surgery. He made it as far as Port Authority. Maybe it sunk in just how hard life can be for a man with no money, no ID, and no mind control powers- especially when they’re probably not even in the country legally. Or maybe he just realized he didn’t have anywhere to run to.

She’d found him hours later, sitting on the dirty linoleum floor of the bus station with the dust bunnies and the trash, his knees pulled up to his chest. She had nearly walked right past him. He looked homeless.

She hadn’t said anything. Just stood there staring down at him, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket, before turning and walking away. After a minute he’d followed her.

Around and around.  
  
She grabs the bottle of wine under her arm, still in its brown paper bag, and sets it down pointedly on the coffee table. It was no _Montrachet grand cru_ , but it was two for twenty at the liquor store, and it was what he was getting. He glances at it out of the corner of his eye. Quick and furtive. Jessica’s seen the hungry look of an addict too many times in the mirror not to know what to look for.

Even she can’t blame him, under the circumstances. Going from the most powerful man in the city, people falling all over themselves to obey your every whim, to eating ramen on her couch? Shit, she’s gotten drunk because her favorite tv show got cancelled.

She tosses the notebook onto his lap. “What do you say?”

I don’t have to do this for you, she thinks. No one would have blamed me if I left you in that glass room to die. You're getting off light.

He drags his attention away from the rerun of _Friends_ on the tv. Flips to the end of their last conversation and writes, every movement dripping with sarcasm.

 _Thank you_ _so much darling_

Jessica is making peace with the fact that there is a darkness inside of her, as real as an organ, and that it throbs with pleasure at the sight of him in pain. If she’s a monster, then she’s the monster that he made her. Dealing with it is the least he deserves.

She hasn’t figured out what fucked up masochistic streak keeps him here. Paying in flesh, one pound at a time, for a place to sleep and a few hours of that special oblivion that only comes out of a bottle. Shuffling around her apartment like a lost soul- a ghost in worn out Tweety Bird pajama pants. Maybe he really doesn’t have anywhere better to go than this, and isn’t that just fucking heartbreaking. Cry her a river.

He reaches out to snag the neck of the bottle, but she catches his hand, bending it back at the wrist until he arches up off the couch. There’s a rough, wet sound from low in his throat, like a cat trying to cough up a hairball. The closest he can make to a yelp of pain nowadays.

“Forgetting something?”

Lip curled in pain, he shrugs, as if to say ‘ _what’_ , with an option on a muttered ‘ _bitch’_.

Jessica grins. “Smile. _And mean it_.”

 


End file.
